Between 40 and 50 percent of workers in 13 American cities telecommuted in 2021, according to the recently released American Community Survey (discussed here previously). The record is Fremont, California (outside of Oakland), where 48.9 percent telecommuted. More notable, three — possibly four, depending on how you count* — of the 13 cities are central cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington.
| City | State | Telecommuters | 2021 Jobs | Change from 2019 | Change in Transit Commuters | Change in Drive Alone Commuting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fremont | CA | 48.9% | 112,508 | 24,873 | -81.6% | -17.9% |
| Arlington | VA | 48.8% | 142,653 | -6,747 | -79.2% | -34.2% |
| Washington | DC | 48.3% | 353,845 | -32,033 | -68.8% | -28.9% |
| Bellevue | WA | 48.1% | 74,006 | -6,368 | -80.3% | -37.5% |
| Sunnyvale | CA | 47.1% | 81,435 | -3,936 | -68.0% | -45.9% |
| Seattle | WA | 46.8% | 438,357 | -23,131 | -75.8% | -30.8% |
| Berkeley | CA | 46.5% | 57,877 | -3,989 | -84.4% | -16.5% |
| San Francisco | CA | 45.6% | 438,886 | -87,136 | -73.9% | -22.8% |
| Cambridge | MA | 44.4% | 70,450 | -816 | -58.9% | -31.4% |
| Cary | NC | 44.2% | 91,393 | 2,320 | 37.3% | -34.2% |
| Newton | MA | 43.9% | 45,504 | -579 | -68.9% | -36.0% |
| Boulder | CO | 42.6% | 55,376 | -3,192 | -72.5% | -28.9% |
| Santa Clara | CA | 40.2% | 68,880 | -6,756 | -80.1% | -42.9% |
Most of these 13 cities saw 70 percent or more declines in transit commuters since 2019. The major exception was Cary, North Carolina. However, the survey numbers for Cary are questionable. Transit’s share of Cary workers went from 0.3 to 0.4 percent. Because these numbers are so small, the margins of error are large. The Census Bureau reported 295 plus or minus 233 transit commuters in 2019 and 405 plus or minus 348 in 2021. Since the error terms overlap, the change from 2019 to 2021 isn’t statistically significant.
What these cities all have in common is that most of their workers are college educated and work with their minds, not their hands. They are what Richard Florida called the “creative class,” but that was just a euphemism for middle class as opposed to working class.
Back in the 1990s, urban planners were encouraging cities to do everything they could to attract the creative class — the euphemism was necessary because they were actively discriminating against working-class families. Supposedly, members of the creative class wanted to live in dense, vibrant cities and get around on urban transit.
If they ever did want that, they are clearly disenchanted with it today. Note that San Francisco lost more than 87,000 workers during the pandemic — in most cases, people who simply moved out. Except for Fremont (which may be where some of the San Franciscans moved) and Cary, the other cities lost workers as well.
In short, many of these cities may have attracted more members of the creative class, but that only set them up for a fall when the pandemic led many of these people to work at home and some of them to move their homes to suburbs and smaller cities. Cities need to stop discriminating against working-class families as those that continue to do so are going to be losing jobs and population.
* Technically, Boulder is a central city as the Census Bureau has designated it as the center of its own urban area, but it is really a part of the Denver urban area as many people cross-commute between the two.
I don’t call them creative. More like….. technical.
Any job you can do in your underwear drinking isn’t hard…..
Cities need to stop discriminating against working-class families as those that continue to do so are going to be losing jobs and population……
No the welfare class are permanently embedded into cities. Cities are largely beyond infrastructure capability and tax base to finance what they need. Working class don’t provide sufficient revenue to do so.
I said longgggggg time ago…. Era if big government infrastructure is over.
For clarification what policies exactly did a city like Boston, MA or the City of San Francisco implement to discriminate against Working Class People?
For the table, is the % of commuters the number of people living in a city like Fremont who have a job someplace else?
Or is that ~50% of jobs in Fremont allow the worker to telecommute?
Cities didn’t discriminate against working class people. They priced them out if existence. Not just working class people, but working class jobs.
In twist of irony…. in Mexico city, there’s an uproar by locals because Americans namely Whites, etc upper income folks are moving or commuting. The protests stem from Housing shortages and increased rent whining racism Americans who moved LEGALLY…. some say MY RENT IS DOUBLE…..
I say really, what about reverse racism why….. should rents double if white people move to town? Expectations of high income attract political huxsters who finally have some incentive to fix badly needed infrastructure rather than seek open contracts to negotiate a price. A few upper income yuppies is insufficient to raise necessary capital for infrastructure repair but wouldn’t admit they had no choice but to raise taxes in the first place. ….
So what is the secret sauce that Boston, Seattle and SF are doing to make their city’s expensive that Detroit, Memphis and Baltimore are not doing then?
kx1781: The table shows the share of people who live in each city who have jobs who work at home. The total number of jobs isn’t the number in that city, it is the number of people in that city who have jobs, even if they work somewhere else.